menu_book Chapter 15

section fifteen of london labour and the london poor volume two by henry mayhew this librivox recording is in the public domain recording by gillian henry of the street-sellers of coke among the occupations that have sprung up of late years is that of the purchase and distribution of the refuse cinders or coke obtained from the different gas works which are supplied at a much cheaper rate than coal Several of the large gas companies burn as many as 100,000 tonnes of coal per annum, and some even more, and every tonne thus burnt is stated to leave behind two childrens of coke, returning to such companies 50% of their outlay upon the coal.

The distribution of coke is of the utmost importance to those whose poverty forces them to use it instead of coal. It is supposed that the 10 gas companies in and about the metropolis produce at least 1,400,000 children of coke, which are distributed to the poorer classes by vans, one-horse carts, donkey carts, trucks, and itinerant vendors who carry one, and in some cases two, sacks,

lashed together on their backs, from house to house. The van proprietors are those who, having capital, contract with the companies at a fixed rate per children the year through and supply the numerous retail shops at the current price, adding threepence per children per carriage,

thus speculating upon the rise or fall of the article and in most cases carrying on a very lucrative business. This class numbers about 100 persons and are to be distinguished by the words coke contractor painted on a showy ground on the exterior of their handsome well-made vehicles.

They add to their ordinary business the occupation of conveying to their destination the coke that the companies sell from time to time. These men have generally a capital or a reputation for capital to the extent of 400 pounds or 500 pounds and in some cases more and they usually enter into their contracts with the companies in the summer, when but small quantities of fuel are required, and the gasworks are incommoded for want of space to contain the quantity made.

They are consequently able, by the command of means, to make advantageous bargains, and several instances are known of men starting with a wheelbarrow in this calling, and who are now the owners of the dwellings in which they reside, and have goods, vans, and carts besides. Another class to whom may be applied much that has been said of the van proprietors are the possessors of one-horse carts, who in many instances keep small shops for the sale of greens,

coals, and so on. These men are scattered over the whole metropolis, but as they do not excessively obtain their living by vending this article, they do not properly belong to this portion of the inquiry. A very numerous portion of the distributors of coke are the donkey cart men, who are to be seen in all the poorer localities, with a quantity shot in the bottom of their cart, and two or three sacks on the top, or fastened underneath, for it is of a light nature,

ready to meet the demand, crying, Coke, Coke, Coke, morning, noon and night. This they sell as low as tuppence per bushel, Coke having, in consequence of the cheapness of coals, been sold at the gasworks by the single sack as low as seven pence. And although there is here a seeming contradiction, that of a man selling and living by the loss, such is not in reality the case.

It should be remembered that a bushel of good coke will weigh 40 pounds, and that the bushels of these men rarely exceed 25 pounds, so that it will be seen that by this unprincipled mode of dealing, they can seemingly sell for less than they give, and yet realise a good profit. The two last classes are those who own a truck or wheelbarrow, or are the fortunate possessors of an athletic frame and broad shoulders, who roam about near the vicinity of the gasworks, soliciting custom, obtaining ready cash if possible, but in most cases leaving one sack on credit, and obtaining a profit of from tuppence, threppence, fourpence or more.

These men are to be seen going from house to house, cleverly regulating their arrival to such times as when the head of the family returns home with his weekly wage, and in possession of ready cash enough to make a bargain with the coke contractor. Another fact in connection with this class, many of whom are women, who employ boys to drag or carry their wares to their customers is this.

When they fail through any cause, they put their wok up for sale and find no difficulty to obtain purchasers from £2 to as high as £8, £10 and £12. The street sellers of Coke number in all not less than 1,500 persons, who may be thus divided. Van proprietors, 100. Single horse carts, 300. Donkey cart men, 500. Trucks, wheelbarrows and physical force men, 550. and women about 50, who penetrate to all the densely crowded districts about town, distributing this useful article.

The major portion of those who are of anything like sober habits live in comfort, and in spite of the opinion held by many that the consumption of coke is injurious to health and sight, they carry on a large and increasing business. At the present time, coke may be purchased at the gas factories at 6 shillings per children, but in winter it generally rises to 10 shillings, so that, taking the average 8 shillings,

it will be found that the gas factories of the metropolis realise no less a sum than £560,000 per annum by the coke produced in the course of their operations, and four shillings per children being considered a fair profit, it will be found that the total profit arising from its sale by the various vendors is £280,000. It is impossible to arrive with any degree of certainty

at the actual amount of business done by each of the above-named classes and the profits consequent on that business. By dividing the above amount equally among all the Coke sellers, it will be found to give £186 per annum to each person. But it will be at once seen that the same rule holds good in the coke trade

that has already been explained in connection with coals, those possessing vans reaping the largest amount of profit, the one-horse cart men next, then the donkey carts, trucks and wheelbarrows, and least of all the backers, as they are sometimes called. Concerning the amount of capital invested in the street sale of coals, it may be estimated as follows.

If we allow £70 for each of the 100 vans, it will give £7,000. £20 for each of the horses gives £2,000. 300 carts at £10 each gives £3,000. 300 horses at £10 each, £3,000. 500 donkey carts at a pound each, 500 pounds.

500 donkeys at a pound each, 500 pounds. 200 trucks and barrows at 10 shillings each, 100 pounds. Making a total of 16,100 pounds. To this must be added 4,800 sacks for the 100 vans at 3 shillings sixpence each, 840 pounds. £3,600 sacks for the 300 carts, £630

£3,000 sacks for the 500 donkey carts, £525 £1,652 sacks for the 550 trucks and backers, £288.15 £300 sacks for the 50 women, £52.10 shillings, making a total of £18,336,05, which being added to the value of vans, carts and horses employed in the street sale of coals, namely £6,865, gives a capital of £252,015,

employed in the street sale of coal and coke. The profits of both these trades added together, namely that on coals, £43,758, and the profit on coke, £280,000, shows a total profit of £323,758,

to be divided among 1,710 persons who composed the class of itinerant coal and coke vendors of the metropolis. The following statement as to the street sale of coke was given by a man in good circumstances who had been engaged in the business for many years. Quote, I am a native of the south of Ireland.

More than 20 years ago I came to London. I had friends here working in the gas factory, and after a time, they managed to get me into the work too. My business was to keep the coals to the stokers, and when they emptied the retorts, to wheel the coke in barrows and empty it on the coke heap. I worked for four or five years off and on at this place.

I was sometimes put out of work in the summertime, because they don't want as many hands then. There's not near so much gas burned in summer. and then, of course, it takes less hands to make it. Well, at last I got to be a stoker. I had better wages then

and a couple of pots of beer in the day. It was dreadful hard work and as hot, aye, as if you were in the inside of an oven. I don't know how I ever stood it. Be my soul.

I don't know how anybody stands it. It's the devil's place of all you ever saw in your life, standing there before them retorts with a long, heavy rake. pulling out the red-hot coke for the bare life and then there's the rake red-hot in your hands and the hissing and the bubbling of the water and the smoke and this smell it's fit to melt a man like a roll of fresh butter I wasn't a bit too fond of it at any rate, for it'd kill a horse.

So I says to the wife, I can't stand this much longer, Peggy. Well, behold you, Peggy begins to cry and wring her hands, thinking we'd starve. But I knew a great deal better than that, for I was two or three times drinking with some of them that carry the coke out of the yard in sacks to sell to the poor people, and they had twice as much money to spend as me. that was working like a horse from morning to night.

I had a pound or two by me, for I was always saving, and by this time I knew a great many people round about. So off I goes and asks one and another to take a sack of coke from me, and being down in the yard, and standing a drop of drink now and then for the fillers, I always got good measure.

And so I used to make four sacks out of three, and often three out of two. Well, at last I got tired carrying sacks on me back all day, and now I know I was a fool for doing it at all, for it's easier to drag a truck with five or six sacks than to carry one. So I got a second-hand truck for little or nothing,

and then I was able to do five times as much work in half the time. At last I took a notion of putting so much every Saturday night in the saving bank, and faith, sir, that was the lucky notion for me, although Peggy wouldn't hear of it at all at all. She swore the bank'd be broke,

and said she could keep the gold safer in her own stocking, that them gentlemen in banks were all a set of bligards, and only de saved the poor people into giving them their money to keep it themselves. But in spite of Peggy, I put the money in,

and it was well for me that I did so, for in a short time I could count up thirty or forty guineas in bank, and when Piggy saw that the bank wasn't broke, she was quite satisfied. So one day I says to myself,

what the devil's the use of me breaking my heart morning, noon and night, dragging a truck behind me when ever so little a bit of a horse would drag ten times as much as I can. So off I set to Smithfield and bought a stout stump of a horse for £12.10

and then went to a sale and bought an old cart for little or nothing. and in less nor a month i had every farthing back again in the bank well after this i made more and more every day and finding that i paid more for the coke in winter than in summer i thought as i had money if i could only get a place to put a good lot in summer to sell in winter it would be a good thing so i began to look about and found this house for sale so i bought it out and out It was an old house to be sure, but it's strong enough and done up well enough for a poor man. Besides, there's the yard and see in that yard there's a happy coke for the winter.

I'm buying it up now and it'll turn a nice penny when the cold weather comes again. To make a long story short, I needn't call the king my cousin. I'm sure anyone can do well if he likes, but I don't mean that they can do well breaking their heart working. Divil a one that sticks to work, there'll never be a halfpenny above a beggar.

And I know if I'd stuck to it myself, I'd be a great deal worse off now than the first day, for I'm not so young, nor near so strong, as I was then. And if I hadn't lifted off in time, I'd have nothing at all to look to in a few years more,

but to end my days in the workhouse. Bad luck to it. End quote. Of the Street Sellers of Tan Turf Tan turf is oak bark made into turf after its virtues have been exhausted in the tan pits.

To make it into turf, the manufacturers have a mill which is turned by horsepower, in which they grind the bark to a considerable degree of fineness, after which it is shaped by a mould into thin cakes about six inches square, put out to dry and harden, and when thoroughly hardened, it is fit for sale and for all the uses for which it is intended.

There is only one place in London, or its neighbourhood, where there are tan pits, in Bermondsey, and there only is the turf made. There are not more than a dozen persons in London engaged in the sale of this commodity in the streets,

and they are all of the tribe of the costermongers. The usual capital necessary for starting in the line being a donkey and cart, with nine shillings or ten shillings to purchase a few hundreds of the turf. There is a tradition extant, even at the present day, that during the prevalence of the plague in London, the houses where the tan turf was used, in a great measure, escaped that awful

visitation. And to this moment many people purchase and burn it in their houses on account of the peculiar smell, and under the belief that it is efficacious in repelling infectious diseases from the localities in which it is used. The other purposes for which it is used are for forming a sort of compost or manure for plants of the heath kind, which delight in a soil of this description, growing naturally among mosses and bogs where the peat fuel is obtained.

It is used also by small bakers for heating their ovens, as preferable for their purposes and more economical than any other description of fuel. Sometimes it is used for burning under coppers, and very often for keeping alight during the night, on account of the slowness of its decomposition by fire. For a single cake will continue burning for a whole night, will be found in the morning completely enveloped in a white ash, which on being removed discovers the live embers in the centre. The rate at which the tan turf is sold to the dealers at the tan pits

is from sixpence to ninepence per hundred cakes. Those at ninepence per hundred are perfect and unbroken while those at sixpence have been injured in some way or other. The quality of the article, however, remains the same and by purchasing some of each sort the vendors are able to make somewhat more profit

which may be, on an average, about fourpence-halfpenny per hundred, as they sell it at one shilling. While seeking information on this subject, I obtained the address of a person in T. Meuse, T. Square, engaged in the business. Running out of the square is a narrow street, which about midway through leads on the right-hand side to a narrow alley, at the bottom of which is the mews, consisting of merely an oblong court surrounded by stables of the very smallest dimensions, not one of them being more than twelve feet square. Three or four men,

in the long waistcoats and full breeches peculiar to persons engaged among horses, were lounging about, and with the exception of the horses, appeared to be the only inhabitants of the place. On enquiring of one of the loungers, I was shown a stable in one corner of the court, the wide door of which stood open. On entering, I found it occupied by a donkey cart, containing a couple of hundred cakes of tan turf. Another old donkey cart was turned up opposite,

the tailboard resting on the ground, the shafts pointing to the ceiling, while a cock and two or three draggle-tailed hens were composing themselves to roost on the front portion of the cart between the shafts. Within the space thus enclosed by the two carts lay a donkey and two dogs that seemed keeping him company, and were busily engaged in mumbling and crunching some old bones. On the wall hung Jack's harness. In one corner of the ceiling was an opening giving access to

the place above, which was reached by means of a long ladder. On ascending this, I found myself in a very small attic, with a sloping ceiling on both sides. In the highest part, the middle of the room, it was not more than six feet high, but at the sides it was not more than three feet. In this confined apartment stood a stump bedstead, taking up the greater portion of the floor. In a corner alongside the fireplace, I noticed what appeared to be a small turn-up bedstead.

A little rickety deal table, an old smoke-dried Dutch cloth, and a poor old woman, withered and worn, were the only other things to be seen in the place. The old woman had been better off, and, as is not uncommon under such circumstances, she endeavoured to make her circumstances appear better than they really were. She made the following statement.

he was there, for he died a few days ago. He always bought a deal of it, but I don't know whether he burned it or not. He used to buy 500 or 600 at a time. He was a very good customer, and we miss him now. The gardeners buy some of it for their plants. They say it makes good manure, though you wouldn't think so to look at it. It's so hard and dry. My husband is dead three years. We were better off when he was alive.

He was a very sober and careful man and never put anything to waste. My youngest son goes with the cart now. He don't do as well as his father, poor little fellow. He's only 14 years of age, but he does very well for a boy of his age. He sometimes travels 30 miles of a day and can't sell a load, sometimes not half a load.

And then he comes home of a night so foot-sore that you'd pity him. Sometimes he's not able to stir out for a day or two, but he must do something for a living. There's nothing to be got by idleness. The cart will hold a thousand or one thousand two hundred,

and if he could sell that every day, we'd do very well. It would leave us about three shillings sixpence profit after keeping the donkey. It costs ninepence a day to keep our donkey. He's young yet, but he promises to be a good strong animal, and I like to keep him well, even if I go short myself.

For what could we do without him? I believe there are one or two persons selling tan turf who use trucks, but they're strong. Besides, they can't do much with a truck, they can't travel as far with a truck as a donkey can,

and they can't take as much out with them. My son goes off a morning to Bermondsey for a load and is back by breakfast time. From this to Bermondsey is a long way. Then he goes out and travels all round Kentish Town and Hampstead,

and what with going up one street and down another, by the time he comes home at night, he don't travel less than from 25 to 30 miles a day. I have another son, the eldest. He used to go with his father when he was alive.

He was reared to the business, but after he died, he thought it was useless for both to go out with the cart, so he left it to the little fellow, and now the eldest works among horses. he don't do much only gets an odd job now and then among the ostlers and earns a shilling now and then they're both good lads and would do well if they could they do as well as they can and i have a right to be thankful for it

the poor woman notwithstanding the extraordinary place in which she lived and the confined dimensions of her single apartment i ascertained that the two sons slept in the stump bedstead while she used the turnip was nevertheless cleanly in her person and apparel, and superior in many respects to persons of the same class. And I give her statement verbatim, as it corroborates, in almost every particular, the statement of the unfortunate seller of salt, who is afflicted with a drunken disorderly wife, and who is also a man superior to the people with whom he is compelled to associate,

but who, in evident bitterness of spirit, made this assertion, Bad as I'm off now If I had only a careful partner I wouldn't want for anything Concerning the dogs that I have spoken of

as being with the donkey there is a curious story During his rounds the donkey frequently met the bitch and an extraordinary friendship grew up between the two animals

so that the dog at last forsook its owner and followed the donkey in all his travels For some time back she has accompanied him home

together with her puppy and they all sleep cosily together during the night, Jack taking his special care not to hurt the young one. In the morning, when about to go out for the day's work, it is of no use to expect Jack to go without his friends, as he will not budge an inch, so he is humoured in his whim. The puppy, when tired, is put into the cart, and the mother forages for her living along the way,

the poor woman not being able to feed them. The owner of the dogs came to see them on the day previous to my visit. Of the street sellers of salt. Until a few years after the repeal of the duty on the salt, there were no street sellers of it. It was first taxed in the time of William III, and during the war with Napoleon the impost was 15 shillings, the bushel, or nearly 30 times the cost of the article taxed. The duty was finally repealed in 1823. When the tax was at the highest,

salt was smuggled most extensively and retailed at fourpence or fourpence-halfpenny the pound. A license to sell it was also necessary. Street salt selling is therefore a trade of some 20 years standing. Considering the vast consumption of salt and the trifling amount of capital necessary to start in the business, it might be expected that the street sellers would be a numerous class, but they do not number above 150 at the outside. The reason assigned by a well-informed man was

that in every part of London there are such vast numbers of shopkeepers who deal in salt. About one-half of those employed in street salt selling have donkeys and carts, and the rest use the two-wheeled barrow of the costermonger, to which class the street salt sellers generally belong. The value of the donkey and cart may be about £2.05 on an average, so that 75 of the number possessing donkeys and carts will have a capital among them equal to the sum of £168.15.

shillings. The barrows of the remainder are worth about 10 shillings each, which will amount to £37.10. To sell 300 weight of salt in a day is considered good work, and this, if purchased at 2 shillings per hundredweight, gives, for stock money, the sum total of £45. Thus, the amount of capital which may be reasonably assumed to be embarked in this business is 251 pounds five shillings. The street sellers pay at the rate of two shillings per hundredweight for the salt and

retail it at three pounds for a penny which leaves one shilling one penny profit on every hundredweight. One day with another taking wet and dry for from the nature of the article it cannot be hawked in wet weather. The street sellers dispose of about 2.5 hundredweight per day, or 18 tonnes per day for all hands, which deducting Sundays makes 5,825 tonnes in the course of the year. The profit of 1.01 per hundredweight amounts to a yearly aggregate profit of 6,310 pounds,

eight shillings and fourpence, or about £42 per annum for each person in the trade. The salt dealers generally endeavour to increase their profits by the sale of mustard and sometimes by the sale of rock salt, which is used for horses, but in these things they do little, the most profit they can realise in a day, averaging about fourpence. The salt men who merely use the barrow are much better off than the donkey cart men. The former are young men,

active and strong, well able to drive their truck or barrow about from one place to another, and they can thereby save the original price and subsequent keep of the donkey. The latter are in general old men, broken down or weak, or lads. The daily cost of keeping a donkey is from sixpence to ninepence. If we reckon sevenpence ha'penny as the average, it will annually amount to £11.08.00 the year, which will reduce the profit of £42.00 to about £30.00,

and so leave a balance of £11.08.00 and a penny in favour of the truck or barrowman. There are nine or ten places where the street sellers purchase the salt. Moors at Paddington, who get their salt by the canal from Staffordshire, Wellings at Battle Bridge, Bailey of Thames Street, and so on. Great quantities are brought to London by the different railways.

The street sellers have all regular beats and seldom intrude on each other, though it sometimes happens, especially when any quarrel occurs among them, that they oppose and undersell one another in order to secure the customers. during my inquiries on this subject i visited church lane bloomsbury to see a street cellar about seven in the evening since the alterations in st giles church lane has become one of the most crowded places in london The houses, none of which are high, are all old, time-blackened and dilapidated, with shattered window frames and broken panes.

Stretching across the narrow street, from all the upper windows, might be seen lines crossing and recrossing each other, on which hung yellow-looking shirts, stockings, women's caps and handkerchiefs, looking like soiled and torn paper, and throwing the whole lane into shade. Beneath this ragged canopy, the street literally swarmed with human beings, young and old, men and women, boys and girls, wandering about amidst all kinds of discordant sounds. The footpaths on both sides of the narrow street were occupied here and there by groups of men and boys, some sitting on the flags, and others leaning against the wall,

while their feet, in most instances bare, dabbled in the black channel alongside the curb, which being disturbed sent up a sickening stench. Some of these groups were playing cards for money, which lay on the ground near them. Men and women, at intervals, lay stretched out in sleep on the pathway. Over these, the passengers were obliged to jump.

In some instances, they stood on their backs as they stepped over them. And then the sleeper languidly raised his head, growled out a drowsy oath, and slept again. Three or four women, with bloated countenances, bloodshot eyes, and the veins of their necks swollen and distended, till they resembled strong cords. staggered about violently, quarrelling at the top of their drunken voices.

The street salt-seller, whom I had great difficulty in finding in such a place, was a man of about fifty, rather sickly in his look. He wore an old cloth cap without a peak, a sort of dun-coloured waistcoat, patched and cobbled, a strong Czech shirt, not remarkable for its cleanliness,

and what seemed to me to be an old pair of buckskin breeches, with fragments hanging loose about them like fringes. To the covering of his feet, I can hardly say shoes, there seemed to be neither soles nor uppers. How they kept on was a mystery.

In answer to my questions, he made the following statement in language not to be anticipated from his dress or the place in which he resided. Quote, For many years I lived by the sale of toys,

such as little chairs, tables, and a variety of other little things. which I made myself and sold in the streets. And I used to make a good deal of money by them. I might have done well, but when a man hasn't got a careful partner, it's of no use what he does.

He'll never get on. He may as well give it up at once, for the money'll go out ten times as fast as he can bring it in. I hadn't the good fortune to have a careful woman, but one who, when I wouldn't give her money to waste and destroy,

took out my property and made money of it to drink. Where a bad example like that is set, it's sure to be followed. The good example is seldom taken, but there's no fear of the bad one. You may want to find out where the evil lies. I tell you, it lies in that pint pot and in that quart pot.

And if it wasn't for so many pots and so many pints, there wouldn't be half so much misery as there is. I know that from my own case. I used to sell toys, but since the foreign things were let come over, I couldn't make anything off them and was obliged to give them up.

I was forced to do something for a living, for a half loaf is better than no bread at all. So seeing two or three selling salt, I took to it myself. I buy my salt at Moores Wharf, Paddington. I consider it the purest. I could get salt, threepence or tuppence the hundredweight, or even cheaper, but I'd rather have the best.

A man's not ashamed when he knows his articles are good. Some buy the cheap salt, of course they make more profit. We never sell by measure, always by weight. Some of the street weights, a good many of them, are slangs, but I believe they are as honest as many of the shopkeepers after all.

Everyone does the best he can to cheat everybody else. I go two or three evenings in the week, or as often as I want it, to the wharf for a load. I'm going there tonight, three miles out and three miles in. I sell, considering everything, about 200 weight a day. I sold one and a half today.

But tomorrow, Saturday, I'll sell three or four hundred weight, and perhaps more. I pay two shillings a hundredweight for it, and make about one shilling a hundredweight profit on that. I sold six penny worth of mustard today. It might bring me in tuppence profit. Every little makes something.

If I wasn't so weak and broke down, I wouldn't trouble myself with a donkey. It's so expensive. I'd easily manage to drive about all I'd sell, and then I'd save the expense. It cost me seven pence or eight pence a day to keep him, besides other things. I got him a set of shoes yesterday.

I said I'd shoe him first and myself afterwards. So you see, there's other expenses. There's my son, too, paid off the other day from the Prince of Wales. after a four-year's voyage, and he came home without a sixpence in his pocket. He might have done something for me, but I couldn't expect anything else from him,

after the example that was set to him. Even now, bad as I am, I wouldn't want for anything if I had a careful woman. But she's a shocking drunkard, and I can do nothing with her. End quote. This poor fellow's mind was so full of his domestic troubles

that he recurred to them again and again. and was more inclined to talk about what so nearly concerned himself than on any matter of business end of section fifteen